The
Crusaders’ "macabre expression of a pagan death-wish," in the words of a modern
Western historian, brought the final rupture between Roman Catholicism and Greek
Orthodoxy. ... With the fall of
Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 ... not only hath the Greek
Church the Turks for an enemy and an oppressor, but also the Latines;
who not being able by their missionaries to gain them to their party,
and persuade them to renounce the jurisdiction of their Patriarchs, and
own the authority and supremacy of the Roman Bishop do never omit those
occasions which may bring them under the lash of the Turk, and engage
them in a constant and continual expense, hoping that the people being
oppressed and tired, and in no condition of having relief under the
protection of their own Governors, may at length be induced to embrace a
foreign Head, who has riches and power to defend them. Moreover, besides
their wiles, the Roman priests frequent all places, where the Greeks
inhabit, endeavoring to draw them unto their side both by preachings and
writings. ...

The late British
scholar A. H. Hore of Trinity College, Oxford observed:

"The fall of the
Eastern European Empire and the low state to which the persecuted Greek
Church fell, and from which it is little less than a miracle that it
should now be recovering, is a chapter of dishonor and disgrace in the
history of Western Europe."